Incorrect run folder

Brief Issue Summary

Running application from CMake: Run without debugging and CMake: Debug uses project project workspace folder as run directory instead of the application build directory.

Expected:

1. Execute CMake: Run without debugging
2. The executable runs in it’s own directory (for example ${workspaceRoot}/build/gui/app.exe runned in ${workspaceRoot}/build/gui/)

This how it works in QtCreator.

Apparent Behavior:

It runs in the workspace folder. This is very unconvinient because project may use plugins that need to be taken from executable folder.

Platform and Versions

• Operating System: Arch Linux
• CMake Version: 3.18.1
• VSCode Version: 1.47.3
• CMake Tools Extension Version: 1.4.1

[bobbrow]

Unfortunately, I’ll need to prepare a patch for that. In the meantime, you could go to the source folder for the extension and delete the cwd: path.dirname(executable.path) line.

It’s on line 42626 of main.js in the extension’s dist folder.

Then reload the window and you’re good to go. Do you know where the extension installation directory is?

[tndev]

@Shatur95 @grapland0 it is not that uncommon in the field of research (But I agree that the default should be the build directory).

My project code and the data are versioned with GIT and LFS in one project folder (to keep everything consistent and reproducible), copying all the data to a build directory, especially if you have a distinct build directory for debugging and release to save compilation time, is really time and space consuming (roughly 500k files with a total size of 80GB). Furthermore, changes to the data that are written back by the application, should then be tracked in the VCS again, which is another problem if the data is copied to the build directory.

Another possibility would be to create a config file with CMake, and set there the working directory as a config value and read that when the application is started. But in any IDE I used it was not a problem to set the working directory for Debug and Release builds, so there was never a need for that and as of that the change came quite unexpected.

Using the launch.json shown by @Shatur95 with "program": "${command:cmake.launchTargetPath}" seems to work fine when the menu (or shortcuts f5 and ctrl+f5) are used, but somehow have no effect on the toolbar controls (at the bottom of the window).